Digital marketing agency Realtime, owned by AI-powered marketing platform Pixis, held its first ‘InnovateX’ event in London, bringing together a group of industry leaders to discuss topics including measurement, AI, and creativity.
Made to measure
The first panel, moderated by Alice Anson, Director of Digital (Retail) Media at Nectar360, explored ‘The billion-dollar measurement challenge.’ Anson was joined by Rupesh Sharma, Vice President, Client Services at Realtime; Gareth CL Maritz, Director of Marketing – Marketing Effectiveness, Martech & Change at Flutter; and Peter Simpson, Marketing Science Partner at Meta.
The panel explored the current state of measurement and the steps that businesses should take to ensure they’re measuring their marketing activity in the most effective way possible.
Sharma highlighted the fact that increasing fragmentation is making measurement more difficult every year. As such, according to Simpson, advertisers can no longer get away with just using a single measurement solution.
In Maritz’s opinion, the key to addressing this problem is having a measurement framework in place and to explore triangulation – using at least three data sources to create a “true” picture of marketing effectiveness.
Marketing powered by intelligence
The second panel explored the power of AI in marketing. Moderated by Neel Pandya, Chief Executive Officer – APAC & EMEA at Pixis, it explored the relationship between AI and humans and the impact of regulation on the technology.
According to Pandya, “AI is never going to replace human jobs,” despite the fears of many. “The only difference will be that someone with AI experience may have a better opportunity than someone without that experience.”
Kay Vink, Head of Product Marketing at Bird.com, shared his belief that AI will lead to jobs based on high-value knowledge work being commoditised and each individual will be able to produce much more than without the technology.
One area where AI is helping brands is around the ad regulations that must be adhered to market-to-market. Prasanna Kumar, Global D-Commerce Experience Director at Diageo, sees AI as a great tool for removing the manual process of adhering to the different challenges posed in different regions, ensuring the right audiences and content are selected in every place a campaign is running.
Prasad Ghag, Global Head of Media, Digital, & Strategic Planning at Sanofi, agrees that the biggest use of AI is delivering content at speed, harnessing real-time insights and behaviour signals. However, working within pharma means that all content in most markets still needs to be submitted to the Ministry of Health for approval.
A concern that many have around the adoption of AI is the additional cost but this can be justified, according to Miguel Martin, Chief Digital Officer at Joe & The Juice, if the output is there. It’s only a waste of money if the technology isn’t improving the business.
Finding your creative spark in AI
The third and final panel of the evening delved deeper into the relationship between humans and AI, particularly when it comes to creativity. Emma Turner, Founder of InHouseAgencyReview, took charge of the discussion. She was joined by Matthew O’Brien, Executive Creative Director at Three UK; Becky McOwen-Banks, Founder of Plain.; and Kevin Chesters, Strategic Consultant at Kevin Chesters Consulting.
Chesters pointed to technology always being “an amplifier and augmenter of human creativity,” stating that we have a tendency to hyperbolise whenever a technology arrives on the scene. He compared any technology to fireworks – dangerous in the wrong hands.
Even in AI’s ability to amplify and augment human creativity, getting the most out of it “requires a human to go in and pull out the best bits, then feed that back into the AI,” according to McOwen-Banks. “Business gains are actually made in the 80% of work that goes into the process before the creative execution.”
For Turner, the key is in understanding what the AI is trying to do for the business. It’s about utilising the tools when needed, but ensuring that everything is rooted in creative insight and product truth.
AI can only complement creativity if the people behind the AI are prompting it to create “great stuff,” according to O’Brien. “Technology is a runaway freight train, but we can lay the tracks. If we have the vision and the skill, we can take it where we want it to go.”
The second InnovateX event, headlined by BrewDog’s James Watt, will take place on 30 January 2025 at 6pm
